Publications

  1. Self-organized institutions in evolutionary dynamical systems games
    Kenji Itao, Kunihiko Kaneko. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122 (15) : e2500960122 (2025)
    A study on the mechanisms of the self-organization of institutions by establishing evolutionary dynamical-systems games.
  2. Formation of human kinship structures depending on population size and cultural mutation rate
    Kenji Itao, Kunihiko Kaneko. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121 (33) : e2405653121 (2024)
    A study formalizing a minimal model of the evolution of kinship structures and showing the mechanisms of how the diversity of kinship structures depend on population size and cultural mutation rate.
  3. Emergence of economic and social disparities through competitive gift-giving
    Kenji Itao, Kunihiko Kaneko. PLOS Complex Systems 1 (1) (2024)
    A study showing how competitive gift-giving can generate economic and social disparities, causing the transition from band, to tribe, chiefdom, and kingdom.
  4. Transition of social organisations driven by gift relationships
    Kenji Itao, Kunihiko Kaneko. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10 (1) : 188 (2023)
    A study showing how gift relationships drive transitions in social network structure and the emergence of inequality.
  5. Emergence of kinship structures and descent systems: multi-level evolutionary simulation and empirical data analysis
    Kenji Itao, Kunihiko Kaneko. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 289 (1969) : 20212641 (2022)
    A study explaining the emergence of kinship structures and descent systems through multilevel evolutionary simulation.
  6. Evolution of family systems and resultant socio-economic structures
    Kenji Itao, Kunihiko Kaneko. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8 (1) : 243 (2021)
    A study showing the evolution of family systems and their corresponding socio-economic structures using asimple model of the lifecycles of farmer families.
  7. Reply to Read and Parkin: Our model correctly expresses the ethnographic nature of the cultural incest taboo and kinship structures
    Kenji Itao, Kunihiko Kaneko. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (17) : 9167-9168 (2020)
    A response article clarifying the interpretation of the authors' model of the cultural incest taboo and kinship structures.
  8. Evolution of kinship structures driven by marriage tie and competition
    Kenji Itao, Kunihiko Kaneko. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (5) (2020)
    A study on the emergence of kinship systems with specific rules—like “a son of the Sun should marry a daughter of the Moon” from a general interaction pattern in human societies: in-laws cooperate while mating rivals compete.
  9. Threshold phenomena with respect to the initiation of depopulation in a simple model of foot-and-mouth disease
    Kenji Itao, Fumiya Omata, Yoshitaka Nishikawa, Tetsuro Oda, Toshiharu Sasaki, Cherri Zhang, John Solomon Maninang, Takayuki Yamaguchi. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering 16 (5) : 5931-5946 (2019)
    A study demonstrating threshold phenomena in delayed depopulation within a simple foot-and-mouth disease model.